To the great relief of people in North Tipperary, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that they had they rejected Waste Management Ireland's (WMI) application to build a mega-landfill dump at Silvermines.

Just at the end of last week it was hastily announced that an An Bord Pleanála oral hearing into the proposal, scheduled for Monday, 21 August, had been postponed, at the request of WMI. Mark Gilligan, WMI development manager, said: ``We are absolutely not pulling out of the process.''

Local people believe that WMI may try to meet the EPA's objections, one of which is over the danger of the mountain subsiding. ``WMI has three months in which to find out how to hold up a mountain, or to at least convince the EPA that they can do so,'' one campaigner said.

The 210 people who live in Silvermines village and the people who have formed Silvermines Environmental Action Group (SEAG) fear that despite their widespread and angry protest, the scheme might yet go ahead. WMI is one of the three largest waste management companies in the world, and has an appalling record of illegality.